Polk County School Board to consider Bartow High master plan, new buses

Madison Fantozzi @madisonfantozzi

Sunday

Jan 22, 2017 at 8:47 PMJan 23, 2017 at 7:21 AM

Board members are scheduled to vote whether to spend $17.5 million of half-cent sales tax funds for the first phase of Bartow High's master plan.

BARTOW — The first phase of a master plan project at Bartow High School and new buses and vehicles for the district's fleets are on the agenda when the Polk County School Board meets Tuesday for the first time in more than a month.

An item that is not on the agenda, but School Board members should expect to talk about is the district's impasse with its unions, which teachers and employees planning to air their frustrations about during public comment section at the end of the meeting.

BARTOW HIGH MASTER PLAN

Board members are scheduled to vote whether to spend $17.5 million of half-cent sales tax funds for the first phase of Bartow High's master plan.

The district paid a consultant $23,000 to design three options for the first phase. A committee selected one of the three options to recommend, which includes demolishing three buildings at the school that are 50 years old or older and constructing new ones.

Another building, which can't be torn down under Florida Department of Education standards because it is not 50 years old, would be remodeled.

If the board approves, the district will go out to bid for an architect to create blueprints of the design, said Rob Davis, interim associate superintendent of operations. That would be a two- to three-month process.

Then the district would have to go out to bid for a construction management team, which would take another few months, he said.

"All in all, we're looking at about two years for phase one," he said. "If there are funds available, we'll go into phase two ... to construct more buildings and put the academies on the northeast side of the campus."

But phase two will rely on renewal of the half-cent sales tax in 2018, Davis said.

"We're not where we want to be totally, but if the sales tax initiative didn't pass for whatever reason and we didn't have the funds to continue into phase two, the school will be fully operational at the end of phase one," he said.

NEW BUSES, VEHICLES

Board members are scheduled to vote whether to spend almost $4.3 million on 39 new school buses and about $490,000 on 20 vehicles to replace buses and vehicles in the district's fleets.

Davis said most school districts are on 10-year replacement cycles for their buses, but Polk is closer to a 15-year cycle, "which is a lower number than we would like, but we're working with the budget we have."

After 13 years on the road, a bus goes into the district's secondary fleet for use when another bus breaks down.

The district has 511 buses on the road every day, transporting about 500,000 students across about 48,000 miles, Davis said.

The other vehicles, or the district's support fleet, are not as big of a priority, he said, because they are not transporting students.

"But we are getting to the point where we can't find parts for some of our vehicles anymore, so we have to start replacing those," Davis said. "We are trying to replace the oldest vehicles with more efficient vehicles that meet the needs of the trade."

TEACHERS TO SPEAK UP

The School Board can expect to hear from teachers and other employees about the district's impasse with the unions announced earlier this month.

The Polk Education Association, which represents teachers, paraprofessionals and secretaries, is expected to protest outside the district office at 1915 S. Floral Ave. in Bartow before the 5 p.m. School Board meeting.

The PEA, which represents teachers, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2227, which represents custodians, bus drivers and maintenance workers, also have asked teachers and employees to speak about the impasse at the meeting.

Because the issue is not on the agenda, they will have to wait until the end of the meeting to speak.

— Madison Fantozzi can be reached at madison.fantozzi@theledger.com or 863-802-7547. Follow her on Twitter @madisonfantozzi.

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